IDC Report: EMC Leads Backup Appliance Market

NEWS ANALYSIS: Storage giant EMC captures 62 percent of worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance (PBBA) market, more than three times the share of its nearest competitor.

Analyst firm IDC places EMC at the top of the worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance market, with EMC claiming 62 percent share for the first half of 2011. EMC's primary PBBA products include EMC Avamar, Data Domain and Disk Library for mainframe systems.

Market growth and the impressive lead over its nearest competitor bodes well for EMC. In its latest market forecast, IDC estimates that the market grew 65 percent in 2011 compared to 2010.

"As a result of our latest research, we have increased our full year 2011 worldwide PBBA forecast to approximately $2.8 billion-well above our initial revenue forecast of $2.1 billion earlier this year," Robert Amatruda, IDC's research director, Data Protection and Recovery, told eWEEK.

IDC also said it expects the total PBBA market to grow robustly with a 2010-2015 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.6 percent, totaling nearly $5.3 billion by the close of 2015.

Amatruda added "We believe this explosive growth will continue through 2015 and is a result of users' desire for improved backup window timing, faster recovery times, effective virtual server protection and seamless integration with existing backup applications. We also believe customers are gravitating towards PBBA solutions as a way to control their data protection capital and operational expenditures."

IDC observes that strategic IT transformation initiatives along with the need for faster backup and recovery, effective virtual server protection, more integration and better cost control are driving more customers to implement EMC next-generation backup and recovery products.

"Deep integration of the EMC backup and recovery products in its industry-leading portfolio allows customers to address a broad range of requirements and challenges as they architect new data protection infrastructures," Amatruda said.

"For many years, we talked about a -tectonic shift' in the backup industry driven by the availability of data de-duplication technology, Shane Moore, EMC APJ's director of Product Marketing, Backup & Recovery Systems, wrote in an email to eWEEK. " This shift has now given way to mainstream adoption of Purpose Built Backup Appliances by the IT community," Moore wrote.

"EMC's definitive leadership in the PBBA market is a result of our long-term strategy to integrate backup software and hardware to deliver advanced efficiencies to our customers-an outcome difficult for competitors to match," Moore wrote. "Backup redesign based upon the right Purpose Built Backup Appliance is clearly an essential element of any successful IT transformation."

According to Moore, the demonstrated ability of EMC to massively scale its systems, replicate efficiently and effectively protect virtual environments also gives customers a future-proof foundation for moving to cloud-based computing models. "By implementing EMC PBBAs, customers have achieved an 81 percent reduction in time spent managing backups, average payback periods of seven months and a return on investment of 450 percent over three years," he said.

Of course, EMC is not the only provider of PBBA, many other companies, including some niche players, offer PBBA products. For example, Chartec offers an appliance-based backup and data recovery product, which leverages the hardware-as-a-service (HaaS) model, where customers pay a monthly fee for a PBBA, which is also replicated on a cloud storage service.

SonicWALL offers a PBBA in the form of the company's Continuous Data Protection (CDP) v6, an appliance that offers rapid backup and disaster recovery capabilities, along with an offsite storage component.

Arkeia is an up-and-coming vendor that offers both physical and virtual backup appliances with optional tape support for archival purposes. Arkeia's products fit into a niche category, but have the potential challenge faced by many of the other PBBA vendors on the market.

Although EMC has shown impressive growth in the PBBA market as more competitors come to market and virtualized appliances hit the mainstream, it may become tougher for the company to maintain that growth and support its lofty current market share.

Frank J. Ohlhorst is the Executive Technology Editor for eWeek Channel Insider and brings with him over 20 years of experience in the Information Technology field.He began his career as a network administrator and applications program in the private sector for two years before joining a computer consulting firm as a programmer analyst. In 1988 Frank founded a computer consulting company, which specialized in network design, implementation, and support, along with custom accounting applications developed in a variety of programming languages.In 1991, Frank took a position with the United States Department of Energy as a Network Manager for multiple DOE Area Offices with locations at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), FermiLAB and the Ames Area Office (AMESAO). Frank's duties included managing the site networks, associated staff and the inter-network links between the area offices. He also served at the Computer Security Officer (CSO) for multiple DOE sites. Frank joined CMP Technology's Channel group in 1999 as a Technical Editor assigned to the CRN Test Center, within a year, Frank became the Senior Technical Editor, and was responsible for designing product testing methodologies, assigning product reviews, roundups and bakeoffs to the CRN Test Center staff.In 2003, Frank was named Technology Editor of CRN. In that capacity, he ensured that CRN maintained a clearer focus on technology and increased the integration of the Test Center's review content into both CRN's print and web properties. He also contributed to Netseminar's, hosted sessions at CMP's Xchange Channel trade shows and helped to develop new methods of content delivery, Such as CRN-TV.In September of 2004, Frank became the Director of the CRN Test Center and was charged with increasing the Test Center's contributions to CMP's Channel Web online presence and CMP's latest monthly publication, Digital Connect, a magazine geared towards the home integrator. He also continued to contribute to CMP's Netseminar series, Xchange events, industry conferences and CRN-TV.In January of 2007, CMP Launched CRNtech, a monthly publication focused on technology for the channel, with a mailed audience of 70,000 qualified readers. Frank was instrumental in the development and design of CRNTech and was the editorial director of the publication as well as its primary contributor. He also maintained the edit calendar, and hosted quarterly CRNTech Live events.In June 2007, Frank was named Senior Technology Analyst and became responsible for the technical focus and edit calendars of all the Channel Group's publications, including CRN, CRNTech, and VARBusiness, along with the Channel Group's specialized publications Solutions Inc., Government VAR, TechBuilder and various custom publications. Frank joined Ziff Davis Enterprise in September of 2007 and focuses on creating editorial content geared towards the purveyors of Information Technology products and services. Frank writes comparative reviews, channel analysis pieces and participates in many of Ziff Davis Enterprise's tradeshows and webinars. He has received several awards for his writing and editing, including back to back best review of the year awards, and a president's award for CRN-TV. Frank speaks at many industry conferences, is a contributor to several IT Books, holds several records for online hits and has several industry certifications, including Novell's CNE, Microsoft's MCP.Frank can be reached at frank.ohlhorst@ziffdavisenterprise.com